I get Golfstyles Washington magazine. I read this article in the current issue and, although this is not a political blog, it is a golf blog…and this just slapped me upside the head. I won’t judge, but those of you who know me know how I feel about this man…in no uncertain terms. To me, this is just another nail in his proverbial coffin and yet another footnote to his long and very uselessly painful legacy.
It’s been nearly half a century since John F. Kennedy worried that it was impolitic to be photographed playing golf. The world was simmering while the president was playing. Never mind the time spent on the yacht or the staged fun at Cape Cod – golf was, and still is, politically speaking, the idle pursuit of the elites, (though who can imagine Barack Obama being anything but a hopeless chop?).
Today, despite Tiger, legions of beer-swilling spectators, and facts that indicate otherwise, golf is still an upper crust caricature when politically convenient. So it was with little fanfare that President Bush quit the game a few months after the Iraq war started in 2003. On the day he says he quit, he was mid-round when the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was bombed.
The media was, of course, aghast that the president was playing while the world was simmering. Media hypocrisy is redundant, but it is irrefutable that young American men and women were being killed while the president played golf.
Only recently did the president explain his decision, telling the Web site Politico, “I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best I can with them and I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.
“I remember when Sergio de Mello (the top U.N. official in Iraq) got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” Bush continued. “I was playing golf – I think I was in central Texas – and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”
Ironically, those comments mirror the war precisely: half-assed and not very well thought out.
First, why was it an official’s death in a war zone that prompted the decision rather than the “good men” of the United States military who were being killed as “a result of these “murderers?”
If it was hollow symbolism Bush was seeking, the time to quit was after nearly 3,000 Americans died on Sept. 11, 2001. Instead, it sounds more like Karl Rove was bored one day and figured the idea might earn a few votes.
Second, how is playing golf any different than looking like a doofus tootling around on a mountain bike? Or clearing brush on an expansive Texas ranch while on yet another vacation?
Third, Bush’s reasoning is an insult to the families of American soldiers. Those families don’t give a bleep if the president is golfing, riding a bike or playing “Risk” with Donald Rumsfeld when their loved ones are taken forever in one incendiary moment. Americans, by and large, don’t begrudge the president seeking an occasional escape from his job.
So why did Bush pick golf as his faux sacrifice for the troops? By publicizing the utterly inane rationale, he either reveals a shallow narcissism or a window into some of the Republican malfeasance that has crippled the conservative movement in America. But, heck, this is a golf magazine, not a political rag.
So here’s a suggestion, Mr. President. Drop the silly grandstanding and instead play the game with vets like Army Spec. Sean Lewis (pictured above). Golf has become a source of solace and therapy for many wounded soldiers and most would cherish a round with the first golfer. Make sure every round includes two vets until the real Mission is Accomplished.
If anyone has a problem with that, so what.
– Michael Keating
